Changing With the Times

In the mid-1990s, ThinkUp was a recognized source in Hasbro Games' search for new opportunities. It was often scheduled into "show times" during sweeps to see toy inventor ideas in NYC. ThinkUp was and remains a creative, Philly-area studio with all the development skills to represent new ideas in illustrations, CAD designs, and looks-like/works-like playable models.

Jerry Cummings, the chief thinker at ThinkUp, knows the 100 to 1 odds against getting a mass-market toy or game idea licensed. As a talented artist, designer and inventor, he takes on the annual speculative challenge of creating toy and game ideas, ever hopeful his next creation will become an industry mega-hit.

ThinkUp has maintained the best of its design talents from pre-digital days and added new skills for today's world: the creation of "pitch" videos.  Video captures product features consumers see and can measure a potential marketing licensee's interest and commitment before model making. Even with 3-D printing, making a fully functional replica of an idea is time consuming--and expensive.  http://thinkup1.com/how-we-do-it/

ThinkUp has expanded beyond licensing proprietary toy and game concepts into other consumer product categories as well. And the studio will digitize product concepts for other inventors, create marketers' promo videos, or even take pixel magic into playful animations with unique characters. A ThinkUp venture called My Pixel Kids uses those animation skills in a YouTube series of classic nursery rhymes. Five Little Monkeys

Says, Cummings of ThinkUp's transition and expansion from its early days of b-boards and model making," We work very closely with clients to minimize false starts or late stage rejection of concepts. Speculating exclusively on what might be the next hot toy or game in our studio only to have it rejected in a marketer's selection process just didn't seem to make full use of our creativity. We still love our own proprietary toy or game ideas, but we are not averse to helping another inventor or marketer create a success. We take delight in using our skills in any successful effort and not just limiting ourselves to a ThinkUp idea to get all the glory--and rewards".

What's your appTITUDE?

When we wrote The Toy and Game Inventor's Handbook, we decided to include a glossary of common words used in the industry. We were not trying to compete with Merriam Webster but just alert our readers to corporate speak and "buzzwords" to avoid potentially "embarrassing semantic ruptures" in future encounters. The toy world is not unique with specialized jargon. Virtually every business has nomenclature that might be quite foreign to "outsiders" unfamiliar with an industry's own lingua franca.

As we plan to do our e-Handbook, we will update the glossary. The industry has grown since we released our original work and so to has the vernacular to describe its products, its commerce, and its consumers. Nothing underscores this more than the hot use of "app" now applied to the latest genre of playthings. In fact, if Toy Fair 2012 is any indication, very key industry words like play may morph to plapp, toy to tapp and game to gapp.

If you were at Javits, you had to be sleepwalking not to notice all the apps and the quick word-smithing to emphasize app domination of many new products. There were add-on products now called appcessories. Mattel juiced up lovable Barbie and classic Hot Wheels with functionality apps. F-P sees baby learning colors, numbers, animals, etc. from an Apptivity Monkey (bib not included?). There was a karaoke app and the Disney Appclix that "lets easy photo transfer even by children". Some of Hasbro Games classics like Life, Monopoly, and Battleship are getting zAPPed for new play experiences.

But my award for emphasizing new-age plapp goes to Spinmaster who coined a real brand catching name, Appfinity and the uses it across a number of items like Applingz, Appfishing, Appdrive, Appblaster, and Appmates. Apps are everywhere!

I appologize if you think I am ignoring all the other thousands of conventional playthings on display at the Javits bazaar. So many applications on new playthings may merely be a show of the industry's reaction to technology so as not to diminish its reputation as a fad/fashion business and a business that does not want "to be caught with its trends down"! Look around...electronic devices are in everyones' hands, and they are hardly a passing fad. I saw a stat that claimed 52 percent of Americans 18 years and older spend 4 to 9 hours daily on such devices. It is doubtful that teens and under are far behind the digital fixation. This is the time for the industry to have applications apptached to plappthings. I just wonder if large numbers of our playful consumers will respond in big numbers and buy all the products at APPS R Us or in the tapps and gapps aisles at Target or Walmart? We'll know more by next NYC Toy Fair! Right?